leaves of grass
good old Walt Whitman
in some ways the father of us all
we who work at defining American poetry
from a humble beginning of twelve poems
to a mighty compendium of four hundred
Whitman kept redefining _Leaves of Grass_
kept reexploring what American poetry meant
until he ran out of time and had to accept
what he had done that far
but oh my! what had he done! "Song of Myself"
the plains, the Mississippi, the frontier
a bunch of individuals becoming a people
trains connecting the coasts
a few states slowly spanning a continent
what an adventure! what an experiment!
and what a way to define himself and us!
No comments:
Post a Comment